Poem Review John Keats La Belle Dame Sans Merci 1819

A brilliant and mysterious poem involving a knight from the age of chivalry, doomed by an act of fairie enchantment.

A poem of twelve four line stanzas, in which an unidentified narrator meets a knight in full armour, who is waiting by a lakeside, and looking very weary, shaken and sad. It is winter and cold. The narrator can see no reason why the knight would want to stay where he is.

The knight tells his story. He was passing through a meadow where he met a beautiful girl who was a fairie. The knight romanced the girl by offering her flower garlands and letting her ride on his horse with him.

The fairie girl offered him drinks made from wild roots and assured the knight that she loved him. She then led the knight to a fairie grotto, where she began to weep severely. The knight tried to ease her distress with his kisses, and she lulled the knight to sleep.

The sleep was one of strange nightmarish dream visions. Strange ghostly kings and princes warn him of the mysterious woman, saying La Belle Dame Sans Merci which means ‘Beautiful lady without mercy’/ These men may be ghostly apparitions of previous victims of her enchantments.

The knight awoke to find himself by the lake where the narrator has found him. He has no idea how he has been transported there from the fairie grotto, and seems doomed to wait there in the vain hope of discovering some trace of the woman who loved him and abandoned him this way. He has no idea where to look for her or if she will ever return. He is just trapped ever loitering possibly until he dies.

Arthur Chappell